Step 3: LED Necklace

Step 4: Thermochromic Brooch - Pendant

Step 5: Thermochromic Brooch - Rose

Thermochromic Rose Brooch from Fangbing Qiu on Vimeo.

Electronic floral jewelry combines beautiful air dry clay flowers with circuits. What do you get? Super cool and high tech jewelery. It will serve as a non-intimidating channel for young women to gain hands-on circuitry experience while building something beautiful, expressive, and useful that they can share with their family and friends.

Step 1: 4 mini projects

Step 2: Clay Comparison

Note that the thermochromic clay is made by mixing thermochromic powder and regular clay. Both types of clay mixed easily and well with the thermochromic powder. It’s an activity that children can undertake on their own.

Comparison of conductive materials used

The main conductive materials used are:

Conductive thread: conductive thread worked best in both creating jewelry and creating heat in the thermochromic clay. It used the less power compared with conductive fabric. It created more heat compared to copper tape. Conductive ink on paper was also considered by painting on a piece of paper and inserting the paper into the clay. The procedure was difficult and was abandoned. In the future, I plan to also experimenting with painting on dried clay. However, since conductive silver ink is expensive, it may not be the best option for the kit.

Conductive clay: conductive clay was used in the brooch project. It was created by mixing carbon powder with clay. The clay was fairly conductive when dried, It heated up and cooled the crystal thermochromic ink very quickly. This is an area I want to explore more and create more projects. Some downsides are that the clay is black in color, thus may not be appealing when not used with crystal ink. The clay is also brittle and cracks easily. More experimentation with percentage of carbon powder and clay needs to be documented to derive the best combination.